


A Bad Peace

by DoreyG



Category: Roman History RPF
Genre: (By Modern Standards at Least because the Ancient Romans were slightly messed up), Ancient Attitudes to Women, Arranged Marriage, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Dynamics, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Misses Clause Challenge, Plotting, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 17:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5256791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agrippa has been dead for a year, she is growing used to being seen as a beautiful and influential widow – the first of all women in Rome - and yet to her father she thinks she’ll always be seen as a disobedient little girl who could never once sit quietly enough or curtsy low enough or make herself a perfect goddess adored by all. She takes a long sip of her wine, puts on her most insincere smile and answers, “am I not the perfect daughter, father?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bad Peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cartographies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographies/gifts).



> A lot of sources for this were taken from Suetonius and Tacitus, which obviously means that you have to take them with a grain of salt. A lot of inspiration was also taken from i Claudius, so obviously take that with even more salt. 
> 
> Title is from a Tacitus quote.

“I wish,” her father says through gritted teeth one day in the midsummer, when the sun is high in the sky and they have settled peacefully on the balcony to drink wine and discuss matters of family and home, “that you could just _obey_.”

Agrippa has been dead for a year, she is growing used to being seen as a beautiful and influential widow – the first of all women in Rome - and yet to her father she thinks she’ll always be seen as a disobedient little girl who could never once sit quietly enough or curtsy low enough or make herself a perfect goddess adored by all. She takes a long sip of her wine, puts on her most insincere smile and answers, “am I not the perfect daughter, father?”

Her father, the great Augustus, gives her the same look as he used to when she was a child and had knocked over a vase. More lined now, yes, more worn down by time – but still obviously intended to have much the same quelling effect.

“Am I not modest?” She continues blithely, and takes another slow sip of her wine, “charming? Learned? Am I not a credit to the imperial house?”

“You,” her father says slowly, looking appropriately outraged at her defiance – her smile, her words, the very fact that she has never quite felt like cowering before him in the manner of a trembling flower, “are not modest enough.”

“That is a lot, coming from you,” she retorts, perhaps a touch sharply, but soon finds her smile again – to show weakness in front of the great Augustus is like showing weakness in front of a shark, ill-advised and likely to end in copious loss of blood, “tell me, father, are the rumours about you true? Does the great Livia really let you bed young virgins because you are too debauched to resist their tender flesh?”

“Tell me, daughter, are the rumours about _you_ true?” Her father volleys back immediately. She expected it, she was taught to debate at his knee from her very earliest days, “do you whore yourself to every man who slows the slightest fraction of interest? Have you been doing so for years now, even before my dear friend Agrippa was dead?”

“What is the difference?” She asks sweetly, tilts her head innocently as she waits for his reply. For, unfortunately enough for her dearest father, he neglected how to teach her to give _in_

“Between our alleged actions?” Her father purses his lips for a few seconds, seems to be thinking. She knows better than that, she’s been familiar with the man for too long to think him truly capable of changing his mind, “the difference is... That I am the emperor.”

“And I am the only daughter of the emperor’s blood,” she points out, and gives a little smirk that she truly hopes is venomous. The type of smirk that Livia could be proud of, capable as it is of wiping out entire troublesome family lines with the slightest application, “we are just as regal, father, we should be just as far above reproach.”

“The emperor is above all.”

“Indeed,” she agrees amiably, for to do otherwise would be an act of war that she is not quite willing to risk yet, “and yet... I know of several men below my rank, who have acted just as I am alleged to have done. And yet they attract not a word from you, while I would be whipped through the streets if I admitted to the slightest sin.”

Her father’s eyes narrow at her, her father seems – always seems, always pretends to be genial when he is actually the hidden snake underneath – to take her in.

“Is that fair, father, when I have just the same blood as you?”

“So you are not questioning the difference between _our_ alleged actions,” her father says slowly, so deliberately that he must want her to feel the weight of it like a crushing stone placed right upon her chest, “but the difference between the actions themselves.”

“Perhaps,” she smiles, and sips her wine again at his sharp look. A nice vintage, it almost dulls the rage that surges within her whenever she has to deal with her family.

“The difference is...” Her father says slowly, as if hesitating. But she knows him better, she knows the deliberate look in his eyes, “the difference is that you have too sharp a tongue in your head, Julia, and it is immodest for a lady of your standing. Sometimes I think that I should be ashamed of you, and then I remember that you should be more ashamed of yourself.”

“And whose fault is that?” she replies with acid politeness, a smile so cool that it could turn water into icicles, “who exactly raised me this way, my dearest father?”

“Sometimes I think,” her father says deliberately, watching her with that calm calculation that she’s always hated with her whole heart and soul, “that you have gone too long without a husband, my radiant daughter. That you would do well under a... Firmer hand.”

And suddenly she finds herself on her feet, all pretence of politeness fled as she stares down at him – shaking with the sheer rage of it, the sheer fury of being _sold_ again and again like some fine horse who exists only to look beautiful and serve its owner’s whim, “you dare, father, and you will _regret_ it.”

“We shall see, dear daughter,” her father smiles, and finally takes a sip from his own glass, “we shall see.”

 

\--

 

He dares, of course he dares for he is Augustus and it has never once crossed his mind to hesitate, and she ends up married to _Tiberius_ of all people. Tiberius, who is slow and slightly timid and seemingly exists only to remind her of her place. Below her father. Below all men, for though she may have the blood of the divine she is cursed by her gender to be but a side detail in some grand and masculine story.

She purses her lips, angrily, endures her third fumbling wedding night. Rises early the next morning, and starts thinking of plots and plans and a thousand other things that will have her father tumbling off his ever so superior position in the blink of an eye.

She is Julia, after all.

And, no matter what the men may say with their narrow eyes and jealous tongues, she deserves far better than to be shackled and shamed and treated like she is lesser. For she is so much more, and they would do very well to remember it.


End file.
